


Avulsion

by Oryx_Gazella



Category: Don't Hug Me I'm Scared (Short Film)
Genre: DHMIS, F/M, Padlock, it means 'to tear off'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 15:37:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1310080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oryx_Gazella/pseuds/Oryx_Gazella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arguments always go better in your head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Avulsion

**Author's Note:**

> UH OK WELL  
> EVERYONE GETS BEAT UP AGAIN  
> SORRY ABOUT THIS

            Paige was indecisive.  Her options stared up at her; gleaming scissors of varying sizes, different knives for carving a variety of materials, fountain pens filled with poison instead of ink, and so many other vicious-looking craft supplies, all laid out on her desk in no particular order.

            She reached out for silver craft knife, letting her fingertips graze the cool metal before pulling away.  No, not that.  Her eyes wandered to a basket of yarn by her bedside; it _could_ produce a nice rope to choke him to death with if braided together…  No, it’d be too risky to try and sneak up on him.  Tony was expecting her, and if she was heard, he’d play dumb until Paige was within his range. 

            Paige huffed, wishing she could take everything with her.  She had to at least narrow it down.  Let’s see…he’d certainly have his sword, and would use it immediately if she alerted him.  There was nothing here with the same kind of _reach_ , but an open pair of scissors could catch one of his swings, if it was slow enough and at the right angle.  From there she might be able to disarm him.  Ideally though, Tony wouldn’t even notice her sneaking up on him, and she’d be able to ram the scissors into the back of his neck without issue.  

            Eyeing her collection closely, Paige inspected each pair.  They ranged from thick gardening shears to small, delicate sewing scissors.  Heavier types with thick screws would be best for deflecting any sword blows he sent her way, but longer, thinner blades would be more useful to stab him with.  

            After a bit more deliberation, she chose a set made entirely of metal, with fairly sturdy, razor-sharp blades that tapered to a point.  Perfect for stabbing, but capable of deflecting a sword if they needed to.  Paige gripped the closed scissors like a dagger.  Her hand flicked in a practiced blur, testing how smoothly the blades moved; the scissors flipped open in an instant, but weren’t so loose that they rattled or felt flimsy. 

            Satisfied with their performance, Paige turned her attention to listening to the various noises of the house.  Every one of them moved around differently; Tony’s walking pattern was distinctively, annoyingly precise.  It’d be easy to distinguish him from the cautious and clustered-together noises of the other three.  He’d be restless, waiting for her to make an appearance. 

            Hushed voices, the sound of something being dropped and hastily recovered, soft, hurried footsteps; all from the kitchen.  That room was ruled out, but she couldn’t hear any other noise.   He was downstairs, she knew, but _where_.

Paige sat still, waiting, holding her breath.

            _Move, damn it._

A few slow, obsessively-spaced steps back and forth across a room and she finally had him.  That room had been a mostly unused office, but it was now half filled with clocks in various stages of disassembly and half filled with unfinished canvases.

            Paige slipped out of her room, scissors clutched firmly in her hand; she was going for a more direct approach this time.  She descended the stairs, sticking close to the wall to minimize any noise.  Heads turned nervously as she entered the kitchen, but the only acknowledgement Paige gave to the three was a finger pressed to her lips as she walked by.  They complied.

            She immediately noticed the door was closed as she crept through the short hallway.  Paige cursed internally; the door was creaky, and she couldn’t get into the room without alerting him.  Alright, new plan.

            The scissors slipped into her pocket.   Paige opened the door and casually strolled in, not bothering to hide her presence at all.  Tony was already up, hand on the hilt of the sword on his belt. 

            “Why so tense?” she asked, giving him a warm smile. “I wanted to know if you were _bored_.  I am, and our _dear friends_ aren’t doing much of anything out in the kitchen.”

            “Oh.”  His hand fell away.  Good.  Tony glanced down to the clock he had been working on before she interrupted him.  A slight smirk pulled up a corner of his mouth.  “Yes, I supposed they _have_ had ample time to recover…”

            As he followed her out of the room, Paige was well aware of the dangerous precedent she was setting.  Playing with their roommates implied a cease-fire.  Well, technically, if they didn’t get quite that far…

            “You go first” Paige whispered as they approached the kitchen “They saw me go through and think we’re fighting.”

            Predictably, he took the lead without question. 

            Tony strolled into the kitchen, and Paige saw the mix of surprise and horror as they turned to look; no doubt they had expected at least one of them to be dead by now.  Her attention moved back to her target; that exposed spot just below his hairline, where she’d sever his spinal cord right between his top two vertebrae; essential decapitation, without the mess. 

Tony got out a fraction of a word before Paige gripped his shoulder tightly, scissors already flying toward the back of his neck.

He whipped around, pushing her back and leaning away with a look of fury on his face.  The scissors missed his throat by a hair and Paige hissed at the dodge.  He was off balance now, and she slashed at him again.

The blades just barely slid across the underside of his chin as he stumbled away, drawing a few tiny beads of blood.  Paige was dimly aware of the other three bolting up and out of the kitchen, presumably to leave the house. 

His sword was drawn before Paige could get another cut in, and now she was the one moving back, trying to get out of his range.  The blur of his sword rushed toward her from the side, and Paige winced, anticipating the pain and tripping backwards out of the kitchen. 

A harsh cracking sound a split second later made her open her eyes; Tony looked as surprised by her lack of bisection as she was.  Her eyes darted to the sword she just evaded; the top quarter of it was sunk into the wood of the doorframe.  It was something they both seemed to notice at the same time.  Tony yanked at the sword, and Paige stabbed toward his hand.

Tony let go and jerked his arm away, leaving the sword stuck in the wall; keeping his hand intact took priority over keeping the weapon as the scissors missed him by a fraction of an inch.

Paige took advantage of his disarmed state to force him back again, wanting to put as much distance as possible between him and the sword.  

On the next slash, he caught her wrist.

He twisted, eliciting a yelp, and the scissors clattered to the floor.  Tony kicked at them, sending the shiny metal blades skittering to the other side of the room. 

Paige swung at his face with her other hand, the blow connecting and shearing open both his face and her knuckles.  Taking advantage of his pained flinching, Paige wrenched her sore wrist free.  She shoved past him, going for the scissors.

Tony tackled her with an angry yell, slamming into her back and sending both of them to the floor. 

            “ _Get off me_ ” she hissed as he roughly turned her over.  

She clawed up at his face, his split open cheek dripping blood.  She felt one hand grip onto her chin and one on her forehead- _he was going to break her neck_

            Two sharp nails jabbed hard into the hollow of his throat, drawing little pinpoints of blood, and the hands came away from her head.  Tony collapsed backwards, hacking and gasping, clutching at his neck.

Paige clambered to her feet, and kicked into his side, grinning at the breathless shout it brought.  Her mind snapped to the knife block, and Paige rushed for the counter.  Her hand closed desperately around handle just as his hand closed around a fistful of her hair, Paige now pressed against the cabinets at her waist. 

Paige’s face was bashed into the tiled counter, blood rushing from her nose and flooding down to her chin as he brought her back up.  Tony forced her head down again, splashing the tile with bright red.  She pulled at the handle in her grip, causing the block to tumble over, knives spilling across the countertop.  Tony laughed harshly as he lifted Paige’s head up again, and she knew he was staring at the same gleaming mass of blades as she was.

Paige blindly swung the boning knife back, sending it into his side to the hilt.  She ripped it out and stabbed at him again, just as her face was shoved against a serrated edge, a gash tearing open across her cheek.  She snarled at the pain, but was thankful her eye was missed. 

The blade sunk into Tony again, scraping against bone this time, and Paige twisted the knife as well as she could.   

He cried out, letting go of her and stumbling backwards.  The knife was pulled out of Paige’s hand with him, its handle too slick with blood and Paige too dazed to keep a grip.  She quickly fumbled for a replacement and whipped around to face him.  The handle was still jutting from his side; she could see now it was lodged in his lung.   

Their eyes locked; both were panting and bloody.  And enraged.

Tony pulled the knife out of his side as Paige rushed him.  The impact knocked the blade out of his hand, the two of them crashing to the ground again.  

“Would you just _fucking die_!?”  Paige yelled, driving the new, shorter knife into his chest, not nearly deep enough to do serious damage.

“Not before you.” He snarled, teeth gritted.  Tony grabbed around her waist and shoved her off, switching their positions, now pinning her to the floor.

He was leaning down now; too close to get at his chest again.  Paige drove the knife into his back lower back, over and over, sending messy arcs of blood across the kitchen.  She kicked and fought, trying to throw him off.

When Tony forced his head at her shoulder, she didn’t know what he was doing.  When he leaned toward her neck, the knife sunk into his back faster, pitch-black, toxic ink dripping from Paige’s neck defensively.

He wasn’t deterred.

Paige gasped as Tony’s teeth bit deep into the side of her throat, blood welling up under them.  She heard a short, low growl, and he pulled back, taking a few major blood vessels with him.

He immediately began to cough as he came away, the ink from her skin searing his mouth.  Paige’s hand clamped over her neck, hot blood gushing unceasingly between her fingers. 

She glared up at Tony leaning over her, his mouth and chin soaked with blood along with little tendrils of black ink.  She hammered the knife into him one more time, dragging it down across his side, hoping to sever something vital.  Paige desperately clung to consciousness, determined to outlive him despite her torn-out throat.

Tony’s mouth came down to meet hers, a move she suspected was a coverup for collapsing.  Flooded lungs and punctured arteries were starting to take their toll.  Paige returned the gesture; was she tasting her blood or his more?  She was nauseatingly dizzy from blood loss, but considering how badly he was shaking, he didn’t feel much better.

His grip weakened, and Tony fell away from her, flopping onto his side and into the rapidly growing puddle of red pooling around them.

Paige let out a rasping, almost inaudible laugh.  She didn’t hear what he breathed out before the life left his eyes and his body went limp, but it was likely cursing, judging by his expression. 

Her hand fell away from her neck; it hadn’t been doing much anyway. A fuzzy blackness overtook her vision, and Paige’s breathing slowed, then stopped. 

 

* * *

 

 

The front door creaked open cautiously.  Harry poked his head in, wary of any noises or movement from within the house.  He crept through the living room, leaving the door open in case he needed to bolt.  Manny and Robin peered in after him, staying outside.

Through the open doorway of the kitchen he could see…plenty of blood.  Then the lifeless, splayed-out bodies of the two monsters they lived with came into view. 

He waved his friends inside. 

“Everything’s clear, they’re both dead.”  He called.

Robin entered the kitchen to stand alongside Harry, while Manny balked at the doorway.

Robin sighed “Look what they did to the doorframe.”  The black sword was still stuck deep in the wood.  That probably wouldn’t get fixed for a while. 

“At least they didn’t break any water pipes again.” Harry replied.  Last time that happened they had a hell of a time simply getting a plumber in and out of the house _alive_ , much less get the sink fixed. 

Though they wouldn’t have to clean up the blood, using the kitchen probably wasn’t...feasible for the rest of the day.  No one really felt comfortable trying to move the bodies out of the way, and the countertop was doused with blood that was at best unsanitary, at worst caustic. 

“So we’re going out to eat?” 

Robin was already on his way out, Manny following close behind him.  “Yeah.  Yeah let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> my starting prompt for this was "they both lose their weapons and scuffle like idiots"


End file.
